The quantity of a small collection can be intuitively perceived without counting.

Children are born with an ability to recognize sets of 1, 2, and 3 items, and with support, they can quickly name “how many” for collections of 4, 5, and sometimes more objects without counting one by one. This kind of visual number sense empowers children and fosters a meaningful understanding of quantity.

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Regardless of how high a preschooler can rote count, a child’s sense of what those numbers actually mean develops gradually. We call this understanding number sense, and it requires relating numbers to real quantities.